


From Death With Love

by Darkinfamous



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Allucinations, Detective investigation, F/M, Gen, Thriller, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-04-27 18:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14431845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkinfamous/pseuds/Darkinfamous
Summary: Seven years after the Night Howler case. Judy Hopps is now a ZIA agent who goes around the world to make it a better place. Not having the necessary capabilities to be a spy, Nick Wilde is left behind. Now alone in a city that hates him, with a new job as detective and the only certainty that his life will be a living hell, the red fox must fight to mantain the order in the street and the little bit of mental health he still has in his head.When a brutal serial killer challenge Nick to stop his series of murders, the detective find himself trapped in a battle with an enemy who seems unstoppable, a heavily damaged brain and the ghost of Judy as his only ally.





	1. This Is Gonna Hurt

“You really are disgusting, aren’t you?”.

  
Judy’s punch sent him on the floor, crushing his muzzle against the ice-cold pavement. Two teeth flied out of his mouth. The blood started to flow out of the broken jaws, falling and forming a puddle in front of his knees. He neared his wrist to his nose and cleaned it from the blood. It was cool. They always do it in the movies. That time just didn’t help at all, because when his nose was clean it started to bleed again.

  
The fox spat that reddish stuff and raised his head up. The doe was still looking at him. Her eyes were filled with revulsion, locked on his head while he was bleeding like a dead pig on the floor.

  
“You know” she said, “It’s not like I hate you. Seriously. I admire you, in some way. It must be difficult to live with yourself all the time and not to succumb to the temptation to blow your own head off”.

  
“More than you could imagine,” he answered. It was just a half-truth. Occasionally he had some very good time with himself. When he slept, for example.

  
While he was talking, other blood flowed out of his mouth. Judy snorted. The bunny walked toward him and grabbed the fur in the middle of his ears. She raised it towards her.  
“How could you think I’d love you?”.

  
He looked at her. Kept his eyes on hers.

  
“I’ve asked myself the same”.

  
“And then?”.

“Still don’t know”.

  
The bunny smashed his head against the pavement. Fragments of bones and spurt of blood flied out of his muzzle. The pain ran through his body, making him shiver like a child.

  
She let him go. He moaned and turned on his back. His blood didn’t want to stay in his veins and he almost chocked to death. When he finally coughed it out of his throat and restarted to breath, Judy was preparing for another hit.

  
“It’s pathetic. Really pathetic”.

 

Yeah. He really needed to hear it.

  
He coughed again and reached his chest with a paw, trying to calm his mad pulse. The dark walls of the room were getting near and he felt the unpleasant sensation to be a worm fighting an eagle. It wasn’t new for him. The worms and Nick Wilde always had many similarities.

“What is pathetic?” he asked. He didn’t need to know it, but it was just to make her happy.

  
“You” she answered “You, your mind, your body. The little sparkle of affection you still have in your chest. It’s sad. Try to tell this situation to somebody. He will think you’re talking about a fucking soap opera”.

  
She raised her feet and hit the left side of his muzzle. Nick’s head splashed in the puddle of blood and saliva next to him. Another broken tooth to add at the list.

  
He didn’t feel so bad. The pain was terrible, but it felt right to be beat off. Sometimes you need somebody to kick your ass to make yourself reconsider your position in this world.

  
“Sweet cheese’n crackers” she said, shaking her foot “I forgot how hard a fox’s skull can be”.

  
“Try to hit on the hip” Nick suggested, “It won’t hurt there”.

  
“Oh, thank you”.

  
Judy crashed her feet on the fox’s hip. When Nick felt a couple of his ribs brokering, he let go a moan. The pain echoed in his body when the fragments of bones penetrated the stomach, making his eyes blur and shutting his brain off. He tried to cry, but the pain was too much for a simple scream.

  
Judy cleaned her paws from the blood.

  
“This is why I left for the ZIA, Nick. You’re not even good at dying”.

  
“It’s not my fault” he grumbled, coughing blood.

  
“It’s the thing you always say” she said, shuddering “It’s always your fault”.

  
“I’m sorry”.

  
“That’s the less you should be”.

  
The doe curved over him, paws on her hips and a little smile on her muzzle.

  
“You really are so messed up, Wilde” she whispered, stroking one of his ears “You still love me, don’t you?”.

* * *

 

  
The fastest way to recover your lucidity after a hangover is filling the sink of cold water and throwing your face in it. It’s not the best you could do, but it works, and it works fast. You’ll probably vomit the soul out of you not much time after, but a little sickness never killed nobody.

  
Nick really couldn’t remember himself drinking the night before. Anyway, somebody had the great idea to place his head under a toss of water and he was now barely able to breath. The liquid was soaking his fur and it had already started to run its way upon his torso. The floor around him was drenched. When the water started to fill up his nose and caused him to cough, the mammal who was keeping his muzzle under the snout got him away of the sink.

  
The mammal turned his head towards him and started to slap his cheeks. They weren’t hard slaps, just strong enough to make him conscious. After some minutes, his vision returned capable to see something distant more than two inches to his nose.

  
There was a female wolf in front of the fox. She was at least one foot taller than he was, but her figure was certainly feminine. The only piece of clothes she was wearing was a sleep-mask. He didn’t even know If a sleep-mask counted as clothes.

  
Truth be told, he didn’t recognize her at start. That’s how messed up he was. She was cute and smelled like sex, so he thought that maybe she could be a slut. Then he remember the last time he made sex with a slut was a good bunch of years ago and didn’t have the guts anymore. The fox realized her identity when she started to talk.

  
“Nick?” she called, looking in his eyes. It was good because he could look into hers, and hers were far better than his were.

  
“Nick” she repeated, “Nick, are you awake? Can you hear me?”.

  
“No” Nick said. She growled a little.

  
“You’re such a smartass”.

  
He laughed. It was funny for him. He liked when people called him smartass. Slick, too. Many foxes found it degrading, but he had to disagree. If he wasn’t slick, he wouldn’t have last to his puberty. It was his nickname. It sounded good on him.

  
Sheila shook his head and helped him to stand up. His legs were sore, as if he had run for miles. She carried him on the kitchen of his apartment and made him sit on a seat.  
Nick looked around himself. Wrong. It wasn’t his apartment. That kitchen was too big and clean to be part of his apartment. It looked like a kitchen from a commercial and he hated commercials. He liked to think they were made for retarded. There was not even an empty bottle on the table, the stoves didn’t have a grease of spot and a complete set of plates was at its place on the shelf over them.

  
Sheila took a glass from the same shelf and filled it with water. Then she stuffed it in front of him.

  
“Drink”.

  
“What is happened?”.

  
“The talk later. Now drink”.

  
Nick looked at the glass. He was not happy when it came to obey an order, but he liked how the glass looked. The water was cool and transparent through the crystal. It helped him to calm his nerves a little.

  
“Don’t you have something stronger?” he said. Nick didn’t want something stronger. Just to mess with her a little.

  
“You won’t have a drop of alcohol from me”.

  
He smiled and got the glass and drunk. The water was as cold as the one flowing out of the sink, but he was okay with it. Warm water is not refreshing. Warm water is useless. He needed something to shake his internal organs. Cold water helped. He felt it running through his throat and then disappearing in the stomach.

  
The fox put glass away.

  
“Thanks”.

  
Sheila didn’t move and kept looking at him. Thought she was trying to act as she didn’t care, he knew she was a little worried. It was one of the few moments he could see a change on her expression. Not a big change, but still better than nothing.

  
“How do you feel?” she asked. The fox loved the concerned tone on her voice, even if the sense of guilty was already starting to kick him in the gut. It was selfish, but he felt good when people worried about him. He shrugged and grinned casually.

  
“The water solved all my problems. Everybody should drink it. What is happened?”.

  
“I don’t know. You just started to yell in the sleep. You looked like the main character of a horror movie”.

  
Nick blinked. The situation was a little embarrassing.

  
“I bet you didn’t expect this when you brought me home”.

  
She stayed silent. She didn’t expect it for sure, but was too nice to say it.

  
“Does it happens often?”.

“Nah. They’re just nightmare”.

  
“It must be a really bad nightmare if you suddenly start to scream”.

  
“You couldn’t imagine”.

  
She puffed.

 

“I guess you don’t want to talk about it”.

  
“Why? Do you want me to talk about it?”.

  
They looked in each other eyes, waiting for the other to start a new talk first. None of them had valuable argument. After almost a minute of silence, Sheila shook her head and stood up.

  
“Ok, then. I think you should start to dress”.

  
He didn’t get it. He looked at the clock on the floor of the kitchen.

  
“It’s just half past four. Why’d we have to go so soon?”.

  
“Not we. Just you”.

  
It actually hurt a little. Nick looked at her with a confused glare on the muzzle.

  
“Seriously? Are you throwing me out of your apartment?”.

  
“Do you know what would happen if somebody discover that I fuck with a subordinate?”.

  
“My personal experience says nobody would care”.

  
“We both know it’s a bullshit. A detective can’t fuck with the chief of his Bureau and hope that anything won’t happen to him. You’d be fired and I’d be probably transferred. If we still want to do something like that,” she said, pointing at the bedroom “you have to go now”.

  
He turned his head on the direction of her finger.

  
“Do I have to think you liked it?”.

  
“Don’t flatter yourself. You just know how to move your hips”.

  
“You know, it’s risky, but I bet a lot of folks would like to know what their boss thinks about my hips”.

_“Wilde”._

  
The fox raised his paws in a sign of defeat, smiling at her weakly. It was a dirty joke.

  
“Easy, fluff. We both know I don’t have the balls to do something like that to you”.

  
As fast as it came, Sheila’s anger disappeared. She almost seemed ashamed she had though he could do it. When he was young, Nick had learnt that degrading himself was always a good way to obtain the forgiveness of a female. If the female belonged to a species with a particularly developed maternal instinct, it was even better. Wolves were part of them.

  
“I know” she said, trying to repair at her inexistent error “I know you couldn’t. I’m just used to all the type of bastards. You wouldn’t be the first to try something against me”.  
“I wouldn’t be the first who find himself in a jail”.

  
Sheila rolled his eyes up.

  
“Now you’re just flattering”.

* * *

 

  
The bedroom was a mess.

  
It was the first thing Sheila said when they came in. “Shit, this bedroom is a mess”. Nick was not the type for those things, but he still felt his male ego floating a little. He was responsible for a lot of that mess.

  
His clothes were under the bed. He didn’t know how they ended there, considering that he had just thrown them on the floor when they had started the night. Probably Sheila woke up and reordered them while he was sleeping. That explained the sleep-mask, too.

  
While Nick was dressing, Sheila looked at herself in the mirror. She turned to left and looked at her profile.

  
“Do you think I’m fat?”.

  
The fox stopped to dress.

  
“What?”.

  
Sheila turned over him. She was still naked, but sex was not in his mind.

  
“I asked if you think I’m fat. Should I make a diet?”.

  
Nick sighed. That was it, then. A female had just asked him if she was fat. His life was in danger. After all his years of hard living, he still didn’t know how to get out of that type of situation. You can say it’s sexist, but all the females who asked him if they were fat reacted the same way. Maybe he had just met the wrong women.

  
“Sheila, you shouldn’t make anything. You’re perfect”.

  
“I don’t know. I think I earned some pounds”.

  
“You look great”.

  
“We just fucked. That’s the only thing I’d expect you to say”.

  
Nick passed a paw over his head as he finished putting on his trousers. That discussion was already starting to push on his patience. Sheila had effectively earned some pounds, but he didn’t give a shit. It was almost imperceptible. And he never liked skinny females anyway, because they looked like skeletons. Have you ever tried to fuck a model? He did. You can feel their ribs poking your skin.

  
“You know” he said, trying to put the shirt on, “I didn’t think you were the type that worried about shape”.

  
“How do you think I’m still like this at forty six years old?”.

“Didn’t you said to your body to not get older when you were twenty-three?”.

  
Sheila looked at him as if he had just slapped her. It was another old trick of his list. Older women liked it. They usually started shouting “do you mean I look immature?” or stuff like that, but they generally liked it. Sheila was the Chief of his bureau, too. You don’t see a lot of men who tries something with a woman in a position like hers. It had passed a while since the last time a male said something like that to her. Honestly, wolves aren’t exactly into flatters, so probably nobody ever said something like that to her.  
“That was really clever” she said, harshly “how many time did you use it?”.

  
Nick guessed he should have seen it coming. Nobody could blame him for trying anyway. It was effectively ridiculous, a little vicious too, and sometimes he still felt ashamed. However, it comes with being a male.

  
“Right” Nick said, putting his trench coat on “It has passed a while since the last time, anyway”.

  
She looked confused.

  
“What was that? Another try to flatter?”.

  
“No. Just me saying something nice”.

  
She groaned and made her way towards the door. The fox followed, still smiling a little. She opened and then looked at him in the same way as before. He liked when she did. It warmed him up.

  
“Today you’re off duty” she said, widening the door “what are you going to do?”.

  
Nick didn’t answer to that question. He looked at her with a very stupid expression on his muzzle and stayed silent.

  
Nick knew what he was going to do, and it didn’t feel good. He wanted to stay with her. You know, doing the things a normal couple would do. They didn’t know very well each other and she was his boss, but he liked her. He didn’t love her or anything, but he was attracted nonetheless. She was strong, beautiful and pretty good in bed. There’s no male who could complain about somebody as her. His Oedipus complex was happy, too. She was more than he actually deserved.

  
But you can’t stay something like that to your boss, because she’d laugh in front of your fucking face. So he just turned his stupid expression in a stupid smile and said:  
“I’m gonna do something”.

  
She wrinkled her eyebrows.

 

“Something what?”.

  
“I don’t know” Nick answered, getting through the door “something”.

* * *

 

The Tundratown’s morning air after a night of wild sex is like a stub in the face.

  
Nick locked his jaws as a blast of iced breeze raised the edge of his trench coat up and ruffled the fur on his muzzle. The cold has always been a big problem for him. He never said anything because the thought of a fox fearing cold is ridiculous. If the fox is a supposed to be one of the best detectives of Zootopia, the entire thing becomes a damn joke.

  
Speaking of jokes, there was a fox in the middle of the street, it was not even five in the morning, and he didn’t know what the fuck he had to do. Well, he knew it, but he didn’t want to do anything. There had to be something better.

  
“Come on. Try to think about it. We both know how this is going to end”.

  
Nick turned the head at his right. Judy was looking at him, her arms crossing and the eyes locked on his muzzle. The fox looked at her in response.

  
“It’s not like I want it, you know” he said “I wanted to stay with her. She threw me out”.

  
“It seems the story of your life. Threw out of things”.

  
“It’s not my fault”.

“You really need to find a new justification”.

  
Nick sighed and looked back at the street. He didn’t even try to argue. He bought a bottle of whisky from the nearest bar, and then proceeded straight to his way for home.

* * *

 

  
His house was a hole in an apartment building on Beetlewere road. It was not like he couldn’t have find something better in some other part of the city, but he wasn’t going to transfer. Downtown was the place where he belonged. Nick didn’t want to broke the only psychological connection he was still carrying with him since he was four, even if it was with a place. Even if it was with a shitty place like Downtown.

  
When the fox finally got there, he was already drunk. Just a little, but drunk. His head was slightly spinning and his eyes were blurring. It was okay, though. It made him felt safe on the way for home.

  
Nick pulled out his keys and forced them in the keyhole. Surprisingly, the door opened. He almost didn’t believe it. It was the first time in months he could enter in the condominium without calling the damn landlady for help.

  
Nick pushed the door aside and walked in. He quickly went over the feeling of being in the Overlook Hotel that assaulted him every time he found myself in that red-painted hallway and started to reach for his door. It was at the first floor.

  
After almost twenty minutes passed reading the numbers on the doors, he found the right one. He went for the keys again, but somebody stopped him.

  
“It was almost hour, Mr. Wilde”.

  
It was a miracle the fox didn’t lose the grip on the keys. Confused, he looked in the direction of the voice. On the red carpet there was a fat female lynx with a long, red dress and an horrible old pair of shoes. His stomach grumbled.

  
“So?” his landlady said, placing her paws on her hips “can I know where have you been for all the night, Mr. Wilde?”. Nick laughed. No, she couldn’t. But he could have a little fun with her.

“You know, there’s a strip bar over the street. It’s opened until six in the morning”.

  
It was not a good idea, to tease her like that. He knew it even drunk. It was just too funny to see the bitch’s chest swell up in resentment.

  
“I guess I couldn’t have expected better from a fox”.

  
“Well said”.

  
“But I think I and the other respectable mammals who live here deserve at least to smell fresh air”.

  
Nick didn’t get what she meant until she pointed a finger at something near his feet. The mammal lowered his look, just to see a pack lying over the mat next to his door.  
“Uh. Didn’t see it. Does it smell?”.

  
The drunk tone of his voice made the old lynx shiver in indignation. She probably didn’t believe he didn’t have smelled it. Nick didn’t believe it too.

  
“Yes, It smells” she answered anyway “I don’t care about what you buy or receive as long as you’re the only one who has to deal with it, but you’re not the only mammal in this building. This is not your personal landfill”.

  
Nick looked at her for a moment, then at the pack again. He still had problems at distinguish things.

  
“I never thought it was”.

  
“That’s what I hope” she replied, sharply “this time I’ll let you pass. Make me find something like that again and I’ll kick you out of the door, doesn’t matter where you work”.  
Without even expecting a response, she disappeared. Well, she just walked in her house. He didn’t see her, anyway. Too occupied in restarting drinking.

  
Nick grabbed the pack and opened the door. He put it on the kitchen’s table and closed the door behind him.

  
His house was exactly how you could imagine a one-bedroom house. Kitchen, living room, a short corridor, one bedroom. End of the story. It would be nice to say that there was something more, but it would be a lie. They were just four walls where to live. Thought he had to admit that in those times, even four walls where just to live were attractive.

  
Nick sat down on a chair and looked at the package. He still couldn’t smell its scent, and the fox didn’t know if he had to think he was getting older or he was already drunk at the point his senses were fading away. At start, Nick thought it could have been an explosive. It wouldn’t have been the first time somebody had tried to kill him, and he didn’t even remember that explosives don’t smell. However, if it was he’d be probably dead by now. He was drunk at the point he didn’t care about his safety anymore.

  
That was when he noticed the note tied at the tape of the pack. Nick untied it and read the write on the paper.

  
It said “From Death With Love”. No names.

  
Nick crossed his eyebrows. Aside remembering him a 007 movie, it didn’t seem to mean anything. It was just a paper with four words. He even laughed a little, because he found it funny. Probably somebody was trying to make a joke. He was the type of fox who can stands a joke at his price, so it put him in a good mood.  
Nick untied the rest of the pack and opened it.

  
There was a head in the package. The little, oval head of a female cheetah. One of her orbit missed of an eye and the major part of her fur had fallen. Her mouth was open in a scream of terror and the blood was dripping out of her jaws.

  
Nick fell on his back, slowly, very slowly, his face deformed in an expression of astonishment and horror. His spine hit the door. Pain mixed with fear, and he felt his stomach contracting in his belly. The bottle crashed on the pavement. Everything he had ate and haven’t digested yet ran through his throat and reversed on the pavement, spreading a green puddle of regurgitated food on it.

  
Nik didn’t remember a lot of what happened after him vomiting like a kit at his first influence. I have to call the police, he though. I have to call somebody, he though. I have to say somebody, anybody that some insane maniac sent me the head of a girl in a pack and nobody noticed it. I have to say that her head is now on the table of my kitchen, begging me to tell her what she had done to deserve that.

  
But he wasn’t strong enough, and his body literally collapsed on the floor. His head fell in the puddle of vomit, raising some spurt of it. His eyes closed, and the only thing that prevented him to pass out for some other second was the feeling of the green substance against the fur on his neck.

  
The last thing he saw was Judy, sitting on a chair with a smile on her face.

  
“Oh, Nick” she said, “This is gonna hurt”.


	2. Pissing on the fox

It was seven in the morning, and nobody had ever told Billy not to play football at that hour because it bothered the neighborhood. The wolf cub probably knew it nonetheless, but he absolutely didn’t give a shit about what his neighbors could have said. Certainly not worse than they usually did. When you grow up as a wolf in a district of prey, you get used to that type of things.

  
When the priest had enough of the sound of the soccer ball hitting his church’s wall, he got out of the holy place and showed all the kindness of his earth launching the cub’s ball in an alley along the principal route, yelling at him to go play where he couldn’t bother anybody.

  
Billy murmured something that sounded a lot like “fuck off”, and went after his ball.

  
When he entered in the alley, a strange smell stroked his nose. It stunk like when his father left the chicken out in the sunlight to explain him the decomposition. It smelled like death.  
A cold chill ran through the back of Billy. He hurried to find the ball.

  
He searched in the middle of the bunch of garbage and old newspaper, grunting and moaning like just a pissed kid can do, and when he finally found the ball wrapped his arms around it not caring if it smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. Billy giggled and tried to run out of the side street.

Two seconds later, his feet hit something along the way, and the cub fell on the asphalt. His muzzle crushed on the street, making him yelp and filling his eyes with tears. The kit rolled on his back, holding his bloody muzzle between his paws. The pain was insufferable. It was worse than that time when he had broken his right arm, and that hurt like hell too.

  
Billy tried not to cry, because big bad wolves not cry. But his muzzle hurt very very bad and he knew he was just a child, so he figured it was okay to whimper a little. When his sobs started to fill the air, the cub though that the priest at the other side of the street maybe could help him. He was a bunny, and bunnies are famous to have good ears. He could surely ear him.

  
When it was clear that nobody was going to walk in the alley, the kit stood up alone and wiped the blood from his nose. He had lost the ball, but he didn’t care anymore about it. He wanted to know what made him fell like a fool, just to remember himself how stupid sometimes he could be.

  
When he saw that the thing that made him fell like a fool was the little, spotted paw of a cheetah coming out of a pile of garbage, he decided that he had enough of the big bad wolf part for that day and ran off screaming to the damn rabbit priest with the blood still dropping from his muzzle.

  
He had to be familiar with kind of things. He was a man of God, after all.

* * *

  
Dent Graham was a little useless motherfucker. The first to say it to him was his mother, and since her, many other people added to the list.

  
The big jaguar was locked in the cell along with three other prisoners. Two of them were his friends, and one was a fox lying on the floor four feet from him. The fox was dressed with an ugly shirt, a stupid tie and some horrible black trousers. He smelled like vomit and alcohol and Dent hated alcohol, because it remembered him is father.

  
The feline growled and looked at the other two mammals next to him. They were a coyote and a lynx.

  
“See?” he said, pointing his thumb at the tod “they did it in purpose. That bastard of Angerson put us in the same box of this fucker just to mess with us”.

  
“He said that it was the only free cell,” the coyote answered. Dent growled again.

  
“I don’t fucking care if the other cell were full. He could have pawcuffed him in the bathroom for what I care”.

  
“Why does it bothers you so much? He’s just a moron. He’s not different from us. The fact that he has a badge change nothing”.

  
“It’s not that” Dent answered “I just hate the way he smells”.

  
The mammal seemed to have an illumination. He stood up from the bench and neared him.

  
“You know what?” he answered, unzipping his pants “I’m gonna piss on him”.

  
“Oh, c’mon” the lynx said, raising his arms up “he’s a fuckin’ copper. We’re gonna get in trouble”.

  
“I told you. He smells. If he really has to smell, at least make him smell of piss. Still better than smelling like a shitty boozer”.

  
“Let him do it, Kevin” the coyote said, smiling a little “I like the idea”.

  
“Aw Jesus, Jack, not you too…”.

  
Dent let them quarrel alone about the argument. He just put his little, dirty cock out of his pants and aimed at the fox’s head. Soon, a slight stream of piss started to flow out of it, splashing on the mammal's skull and soaking his already filthy fur. A moan of satisfaction flowed out of the feline’s mouth.

Behind him, Kevin tried to repress the urge of vomit and Jack laughed his ass off with a stupid grin on his muzzle and a couple of crazy bug eyes.

  
When the stream of piss ended and the jaguar took his cock back in his trousers, Kevin grumbled.

  
“You happy, now? You just pissed on a fucking detective. I don’t know what the hell you got out of it, but-“.

  
“Shut the fuck up”.

  
Kevin shut the fuck up. The jaguar stayed silent for a couple of minutes, looking at the unconscious body of the canine at his feet.

Then he turned back to the couple of mammal behind him and reached an arm towards Jack.

  
“Jack, you still have your lighter, light?”.  
“Of course” he answered, still grinning “They didn’t find it”.

  
“Give it to me”.

  
The mammal sunk his paw in a fissure in his jeas and took it out a little lighter. He handled it to Dent. The jaguar lighted it and neared the flame at the dry fur of the fox.

  
“Woah!” Kevin said, jumping on his foot with an expression of fear on his face “woah! Ehy! What the fuck are you going to do?!”.

  
“I thought it was clear” Dent answered “I’m gonna put him on fire”.

  
“What?! What, are you fucking crazy!? You can’t burn him alive! He’s a fucking detective! We’re gonna end in a jail for the rest of our lives!”.

  
“I don’t care a shit about it. Look at him”.

  
The jaguar pointed a paw to the fox. He growled.

  
“Seriously, look at him. He’s garbage. We’re gonna make the world a better place with a finger's movement".

  
Just in that moment, the fox coughed a bit of vomit on the pavement and a sigh got out of his muzzle. Kevin’s eyes widened in horror as he pointed both his paws at the fox.

  
“Shit! Look! He’s awakening! Fucking look! You can’t burn him alive! Look around you! You c-“.

  
KLUNK.

  
The door of the cell opened with a metallic sound, and a lion came in. The lighter fell off the jaguar’s paw and Kevin jumped on the bench again. Jack stayed exactly where he was, still laughing like a kit. The lion looked around him and puffed.

  
“What the fuck is happening here?”.

  
“Nothing, boss. Just having a little fun”.

  
The cop walked toward the fox and looked at him. He curved over him to smell his fur, and two seconds later he distances his muzzle from it.

  
“Jesus Christ” he said, snorting “who’s the cunt who pissed on him?”.

  
Dent and Jack laughed. Kevin sighed and took his head between his paws. The lion cussed and grabbed the fox on the floor for his shirt.

  
“You cunts” he growled, getting out of the box “at this point you could fuck him up the arse. At least I wouldn’t have been forced to smell this scent”.

  
That said, the lion started to walk through the corridor, probably headed to the bathroom.  
Dent turned his head towards the two mammal with an astonished expression on his muzzle.

  
“Shit” he said, “I didn’t think about it”.

* * *

  
Sheila’s office looked exactly like her apartment: big, clean and ordinate. The floor was shining and the piles of paperwork on her counter were perfectly lined up. The only thing on the desk aside them was a pot of flower, probably because Sheila thought they helped to make her look less scary. There were no picture or drawing of any type.

  
The female wolf sat on her seat, her fingers crossed and her eyes pointed to the door, waiting for something that she only knew. The soft shivering of her body was almost impossible to notice, but there it was. She was angry out of her mind and ready to prove it to the mammal that provoked the anger.

  
Suddenly, the door opened. A lion cop and a fox entered in the office. The feline was basically carrying the smaller mammal along, forcing him to stay on his feet. He put him on the chair and then looked at the detective.

  
“Here he is, Chief. I tried to clean him up a little, but you can’t clean up the shit”.

  
Sheila shook her head and then sighed. She pointed at the door.

  
“Thank you, Daniel. I’ll appoint you for a promotion. You can go now”.

  
The lion greeted and left the room. Sheila’s look turned to the fox in front of her.

  
“Hi, Nick” she said. Her voice was an ice-cold noise from the deep of the earth. The fox didn’t answer, positively confirming her doubt about if he was capable stay silent for more than twenty seconds or not. Sheila appreciated it.

  
“You look horrible”.

  
Nick blinked. She was saying it just to mess with him, but it was definitely sure. His eyes were red and his fur was drenched and filthy. His cloches were soaked in water and still probably dirtier than his fur. He smelled like piss, vomit and disgusting deodorant in sale.  
The fox pointed his thumb at the door.

  
“That fucker called me shit” he said. Sheila shrugged.

  
“Yes, he did”.

  
“It’s not a nice thing”.

  
“No, it isn't".

  
“And you’re not gonna do anything to him” Nick said, “cause you’re angry with me”.

  
Sheila left out a laugh.

  
“Your detective sense is great today”.

  
“Why are you angry with me?”.

  
The question left her a little perplexed. After a moment of disbelief, the Detective Chief posed her back to the chair and crossed her arms on the chest.

  
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because that bitch of your landlady found you chocking in a puddle of your own vomit with the head of a dead cheetah on your kitchen table. Maybe because the bunch of mentally retarded fuckers we call police officers that she called in panic thought you are a fucking serial killer. Maybe because today I was off-duty too, and you forced me to come here to bring your fat ass out of jail”.

  
“I’m not fat”.

  
“Yes you are. And don’t talk me back when I’m scolding you”.

  
Nick laughed softly and lowered his head. Sheila passed a paw over her muzzle and sighed weakly. The female put her elbows on the desk and inclined her back towards him.

  
“Nick, I know you. You don’t have the balls to kill a woman, let alone to cut her head off. I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on, and I need it now”.

  
The fox shrugged and looked away.

  
“There’s not much to say. Went home. Found a pack in front of my door. Looked in it and saw the cheetah’s head looking me back. Threw up and then passed out on the floor. End of the story”.

  
Sheila raised an eyebrow.

  
“That’s it?”.

  
“Yes. That’s it”.

  
“And why do you smell like piss, then?”.

  
Nick didn’t answer immediately. First, he raised his right arm up and sniffed his armpit.

  
“I think somebody emptied his bladder on me when I was in jail” he replied, lowering his arm back.

  
Sheila moaned sadly and covered her eyes with her paws. Nick looked at her, silently, the ghost of a smile on his face. The female placed her paws on her forehead.

  
“Why?” she hissed, stroking her temples “why I had to fell in love with you, among all the detective in this city?”.

  
Nick’s smile disappeared.

  
“You fell in love-“.

  
“Shut up!” she yelled, standing up. Her face was contracted in a growl and her arms were trembling. “Just shut the fuck up! Don’t say a fucking word, or I’ll be the next one to piss over you!”.

  
“Didn’t know you were in this kind of things”.  
The wolf yelped in anger, letting herself fall on the chair again.

  
“And to think Bogo told me everything about you” she remembered melancholically, looking at the roof “It was the first thing he said when you passed the exam. ‘Sheila, I don’t give a shit about the others. Just remember that the fox is a walking bunch of burdens’. That’s what he told me when you came in my bureau”.

  
“I-“.

  
‘But I had to think he was just overstressing, of course” she added sarcastically, interrupting him again “and I had to put you in my team, because your eyes are pretty”.

  
“I thought you put me in your team because I was a good detective”.

  
The female snorted.

  
“You don’t want to know what I think about your work as a detective”.

  
Nick tried to reply, but suddenly somebody knocked at the office’s door. Sheila snarled and raised her paw.

  
“Come in”.

  
The door moved and a female lion entered in the office. She was wearing a long, white trench coat and a couple of trousers of the same color. The female wolf sighed and passed a paw over her head.

  
“Hi, Jessica”.

  
The lioness nodded in her direction.

  
“Boss”.

  
Then she turned her head to Nick. One of her eyebrows raised on her head.

 

“The sleeping beauty is finally awake?”.

  
Nick laughed and relaxed his back on the chair. Then he raised a paw and pointed it at his muzzle.

  
“I don’t know, Jessy. Do you want to give me a kiss to be sure?”.

  
A flustered chill started to shake the woman’s body. Nick had always suspected she had a little crush on him, but he couldn’t be sure. Lions are strong and proud, and falling for a mammal with a sixth of your total weight can’t be easily accepted in their kind of culture. Still, it wasn’t difficult to notice the glances the female gave at his ass every time she thought he wasn’t looking.

  
Exactly how it wasn’t difficult to notice the change of smell of his boss. When Nick realized she was jealous, his little male ego received a new boost.

  
“Maybe another time, fox” Jessica answered, smoothing her trench coat “you must buy me lunch first”.

  
Sheila rolled her eyes up.

  
“You two can flirt another time. What are you doing here?”.

  
Jessica pointed the thumb behind her.

  
“A cub found a body in a street”.

  
“We found body in the streets every day of our lives”.

  
“This one was a female cheetah’s propriety. There’s no head on it”.

  
For a moment, the office fell in the fullest silence. Sheila’s eyes widened. Nick turned his head towards her, his ears still lowered and the sides of his muzzle bent down.

  
“It’s her”.

  
Not waiting for anything, Sheila stood up and grabbed her trench coat from the coat rack. While she was putting it on, the female wolf looked at Jessica.

  
“Where’s the body?”.

  
“Downtown. I don’t remember the name of the street but I know how to go there”.

  
“Good. I’m coming with you”.

  
The female turned her head towards Nick.

  
“Wilde, you too”.

  
The fox snorted and took his muzzle between his paws.

  
“No, thanks. I think I’ve seen enough dead things for today. I’m going to take a shower”.

  
“The fuck you are. Our little chat is not end and I need your brain on the scene, so stop acting like a pussy".

  
The wolf looked at Jessica.

  
“No offence, Jessy”.

  
“None taken”.

  
Nick sighed and got up, paws in his trouser pocket and ears pressed against his skull.

  
“And they say police brutality is just a myth”.

* * *

  
When Nick said he didn’t want to see any more dead things, he meant it seriously. The fox never get used to that part of the job. Seeing them, looking them, sniffing them. He was a predator and he should have been genetically incapable to prove fear or disgust looking at ripped guts, exploded heads or anything his work forced him see, but it was just what the medics said. His own memory of him throwing up at every crime scene demonstrated that what the medics said was bullshit.

  
Sheila knew it. When the smell of fear started to float in the car, the female wolf sighed weakly and turned back at him.

  
“For God’s sake, Nick. Get your shit together”.

  
“What’s the problem?” Jessica asked, looking at her. She was driving and she knew that a person with a bit of brain shouldn’t get its eyes off a street when it’s driving, but the road was straight and there weren’t a lot of cars.

Sheila moaned and placed her head at the window again. “Nothing. Just Nick going out of his mind at the thought of a dead body”.

  
Jessica laughed and turned to her left, passing under a subway.

  
“Seriously, Wilde? All these years and you’re still scared of blood?”.

  
“It’s not blood,” he answered, looking at his feet “it’s never blood. Next time you see an intestine nailed to a wall, just think that yours would look the same at its place. You’ll know what I feel when I see something like a decapitated head on my fucking kitchen table”.

  
His sarcastic tone made Jessica’s fur curl. The lioness shook her head and accelerated.

  
“But if you’re so impressionable, then why’d you decided to be a detective? Wouldn’t have been safer directing traffic with the blue jackets?”.

  
Nick’s eyes softened. The fox sighed and curved his back until his head was between his knees. He didn’t answer.

  
“Wilde?”.

  
Silence.

  
“I had another choice” he finally said, massaging his eyes with the thumbs “but I wasn’t good enough for it”.

  
The tone with he said it didn’t go unnoticed by Sheila. The maternal instinct of the wolf started to kick again in the back of her brain. She already knew where the discussion was going to end, and she had no intention to see the fox more mentally instable than he already was. Seeing that Jessica was going to ask something again, she looked out of the window and then put an arm out of it.

  
“How long until we are there?” she asked, enjoying the wind that was running on her coat. Her interruption made Jessica look at her with a look that was basically saying “I know you did it on purpose”, but she didn’t complain. If it was something she couldn’t know, then she was going to discover it alone.

  
“Five minutes” she replied “then we’re there”.

  
“Good. Nick, stop shitting yourself and put your brain to work. Your only quality as a male is your cleverness. You gotta start to be clever”.

  
Nick smiled and closed his eyes.

  
“I thought my only quality as a male was being a male”, he said, with a satisfied tone of voice. Sheila’s eyes widened. She instinctively looked at Jessica, just to found the lioness looking back at her.

  
“I…uh…”.

The wolf locked her jaws.

  
“I don’t know what he’s talking about”.

  
Three minutes later, the car stopped next a little alley along the road. Police officers and a couple of detectives were already surrounding the place. Thirty feet away, a wolf kit with a blanket on his shoulder was crying in the arms of a female wolf.

  
“Bring Nick to the body, Jessy” Sheila said, shaking her head “I’ll talk with the mother”.

  
“Are you gonna hug the kid too?”.

  
Sheila’s only answer was a glance that could have burned down a forest. When she started to walk toward the two wolves, Jessica looked back at Nick.

  
“You hear the boss, Wilde”.

  
“Yes, I hear her. Let’s finish it”.

  
The two mammals made their way through the bunch of police officers. When the wall of blue was supered, Jessy halted and pointed her paw in a point in the middle of the garbage.

  
“Here”.

  
Nick sighed and lowered his look.

  
The female cheetah’s body was just a carcass lying in the dirt. Her fur was still attacked to her skin, but the medical examiner had already told them that it wasn’t going to last long. The rigor mortis was already doing its job and the decomposition turned even just staying near of the body in a burden.

  
It wasn’t how Nick had thought. It wasn’t how Nick had thought at all.

  
It wasn’t horrific. It wasn’t terrifying. It wasn’t disgusting or repulsive. He didn’t feel the urge to puke nor the need to run off. The smell was horrible, of course, but he could handle it. He asked himself why he found so easy to look at her when five minutes earlier he didn’t even want to come near the crime scene. Maybe it was because he was getting used to it. Maybe because he still had a little hangover pushing against his head.  
Maybe because he felt that something in all that play was not right, and it made him not capable to focus on the body enough to get nauseated.

  
The fox looked at her perfectly severed neck, and a cold chill ran over his back. He didn’t know why, but something was telling him that it was his fault if that cheetah was dead instead of hanging around with some shitty friend.

  
“Well, you’re handling it pretty good”.

  
Nick looked at Jessica. The lioness was observing him with her arms crossed on her chest and a critical look in her eyes. Nick puffed.

  
“Yeah. It happens, from time to time”.

  
Jessica smiled.

  
“Good for you”.

  
“Detectives?”.

  
Nick and Jessica raised their head up. A female antelope was standing a few feet in front of them. The woman was wearing a white lab coat that covered her entire body. Her face was a marble-mask, and Nick had to admit that not even he couldn’t manage to make his muzzle look so emotionless. As regards the “never let them see that they get you”, that female was far better than him.

  
“I’m Mia Losangez” she said, raising her paw “I’m the new medical examiner”.

  
Nick had a reputation to maintain, and the revelation found him as calm as a Hindu Cow. For a moment, Jessica’s muzzle betrayed the surprise in her eyes, but after some seconds the lioness managed to get back to her normal coolness and shacked the antelope’s paw.

  
“Jessica Sunders. I never heard about a new M.E. What’s happened to Sanson?”.

  
Mia shrugged and took a pack of cigarette out one of her gown’s pockets.

  
“Mr. Sanson has been forced to leave the work. He had a little...shit, how I can say it without sounding offensive…A little breakdown”.

  
“A breakdown?” Nick asked. The antelope nodded and lightened the cigarette.

  
“Yes. The last time I saw him, his treating physician was trying to get him out of his hospital room with a teddy bear and a couple of nurses dressed like Mary Poppins”.

  
Nick wrinkled his eyebrows.

  
“Sounds like a big breakdown to me”.

  
The antelope giggled softly. After letting go a little puff of smoke out of her mouth, she turned her head towards him, a skeptical look in her eyes. Nick didn’t like that look, but she was still smiling a little, so it wasn’t so bad after all.

  
“You must be Nick Wilde”.

  
“That’s what they told me”.

  
Mia took the cigarette out of her mouth.

  
“I heard some voices about you”.

  
“Really?”.

  
“Yes. Cops say you are a self-destructive psycho with an obsession for control and a taste for interspecies sex”.

  
Nick shrugged.

  
“Yes, but I have downsides too”.

  
The antelope shook her head and looked at Jessica. The lioness was observing the body, with a sparkle of sadness in her eyes that Nick rarely saw. Mia rolled her eyes up and shacked a paw in her direction.

  
“You can look as much as you want, detective. You won’t find anything”.

  
Jessica didn’t took her eyes off the body, but her ears curved towards her.

  
“Why not?”.

  
“That girl has been lying in the dirt for at least twelve hours. If we want to find something, we need the help of the SID”.

  
Jessy shook her head in misbelief and then passed a paw over her head.

  
“C’mon, Wilde. Let’s grab the boss and go back to the Bureau. I need to know why Sheila didn’t bother to tell us about a new E.M. in the club”.

  
Nick didn’t move a muscle. He kept looking at the body, not even turning his head towards her. He then neared it and curved his head on her severed neck.

  
“You two go on. I want to stay here a little bit more”.

  
The two females shrugged and then got out of the alley. Nick turned his head towards the body.

  
“You know, that’d be a good moment to prove you’re not garbage”.

  
Nick raised his eyes and saw Judy standing next to the body, the ghost of a smile on her muzzle and her paws crossed behind her back.

  
“I’m not garbage” Nick said. Judy shrugged.  
“If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be here talking about it”.

  
The fox puffed and lowered his gaze to look at the female.

  
“She was young” he started, “twenty, maybe twenty-one years old. Her fur is dirty but you can still see it was preserved, she cared about it. I still can smell a hint of perfume. Luxury stuff, not the shit they sell you in shops. So she was rich, or it was a present from a rich friend. In any case, she was part of the high ranks”.

  
Nick looked at Judy. His speech wasn’t very astonishing, but maybe it was enough to provoke a reaction. He was wrong, of course.

  
“That’s all?” she said, trying to contain a laugh, “Every detective with a couple of eyes could have guessed it”.

  
Nick shivered. He changed position and went on his knees to look at the cut on the cheetah’s neck.

  
“The killer didn’t murder her here. There’s not enough blood. He killed her somewhere he could do it undisturbed and then took the corpse in this alley. The cut is clean, he didn’t do it with a knife. He looks more as-”.

  
“A guillotine”.

  
Nick nodded.  
“I don’t think it matters, honestly. The problem isn’t how he killed her, but why is she here”.

  
Judy laughed.

  
“Aw, c’mon. Even someone like you could get it. We’re talking about a serial killer. Serial killers like to let people see their works”.

  
“Yes, I know. But I don’t think this is the type of psycho who kills that way”.

  
Judy wrinkled her eyebrows.

  
“Why not?”.

  
Nick raised his head and looked around him.

  
“Let’s suppose he’s doing it just because he wants us to see how good he is at killing people. He could have let the body in a highly populated area, not in a fucking hole like this. The possibilities of people founding it could have been a lot more. Instead he first sent me the head of the girl, and then waited for us to find the body”.

  
“So you think he has been lucky?”.

  
Nick shook his head.

  
“I think he didn’t care about cops finding the body as much as he cared about me finding the head”.

  
Silence. Judy walked around the corpse of the female and gave a look at the cut.

  
“So” she said “you think he’s challenging you?”.

  
Nick didn’t answer. He instead put a paw over the left arm of the girl and raised it.  
“Something’s not right” he murmured, more for him than for Judy “I mean, let’s suppose he wanted me to notice the murder. He already sent me the fucking head. Why should he leave the body…”.

  
CLICK.

  
The noise of a switched button filled Nick’s ears. The fox looked at his feet and saw he had stepped on a wire, tending it. It was so near to the body that it was almost impossible to see it from distance.

  
A little ping spread in the air, followed by another. And then another. And then another again.

  
Nick stood up. He didn’t need to see it to know what it was, like he didn’t need to know what could have happened if he removed the foot from the wire. Breathing out loud to remain quiet, the fox turned his head towards the nearest police officers.

  
“Ehy, sweetheart”.

  
The young ocelot turned over him. She was pissed, probably by the fact that Nick had called her “sweetheart”. The fox learnt some time ago that female officers don’t like pet names.

  
“You need something, sir?” she asked. Nick made the best reassuring smile he could manage to do in that kind of situation and then pointed a finger at her pockets.

  
“Honestly, yes. I’d be really happy if you just called the bomb squad here”.

  
The ocelot’s eyes widen.

  
“Come again?”.

  
“Yeah, well” Nick said, and then moved his foot a little “I’m not exactly proud of it, but I think there’s a bomb hidden in this bunch of garbage and I just stepped on the wire that activated it. Could you-”.

  
Nick couldn’t end the line that the ocelot was already running towards the nearest patrol car, screaming about bombs and morons in trench coat stupid enough to step on them.  
The fox smiled sadly and turned his head towards Judy. The bunny had her eyes locked on him, a sarcastic smile on her lips and her arms crossed on the chest.

Nick sighed and slipped his paws in his pockets.

  
“I guess I really suck, after all”.

 

 

 


	3. Hard times

_It’s all a fucking game._

_When he brought me the cheetah’s head he already knew what would happen. He knew they were going to ask me to help in the case, and he knew I was going to step on the bomb. He knew what would happen and he knows what will happen next. But there’s still something not right…something…_

“Detective Wilde?”

Nick shook his head to clear his thoughts and turned his eyes to the bomb disposal technician a few inches from him. He was on his knees, and in front of him, there was what looked like a cylindrical steel box. There was a display over it, and what the display said was “13:54”.

Countdown.

“Detective” the porcupine repeated “I have to ask you not to move.”

“Sure? Because I was just going to show you how good I am at the tango.”

The porcupine raised his eyebrows and turned his head towards Sheila. The female wolf was biting her nails, her eyes locked on the bomb. When the technician looked at her, the Chief of Bureau just shook her head and moved her paw in Nick’s direction.

“Ignore him. He says bullshit when he’s nervous.”

“It helps you keep your mental sanity.” Nick explained.

Bill -that was the name of the porcupine, even if Nick didn’t remember it- rolled his eyes and took the bomb in his paws.

“Ok,” he said “it doesn’t look like a normal tripwire bomb. Did it do a “click” when you stepped on the wire?”

“Yes.”

“Then it doesn’t make sense. Aside the design that’s completely different, tripwire bombs are programmed to explode when you step on it. That means you should be dead by now.”

“Big loss for the world.” Jess said, smirking a little. Nick sighed harshly.

“Ok, doc. Can we skip the part where everybody’s sad 'cause I’m still alive and explain me what the Hell’s happening here?”.

“I heard that tripwire bombs explode even when the tension is interrupted” the lioness objected, “maybe this is of that kind”.

Bill nodded and then asked one of his coworkers to handle him a screwdriver. “That’s right” he said, turning the bomb’s display over the pavement and starting to dismantle the back “it would make sense. But in that case, the bomb should explode _just_ when you release the tension. Why’s there a countdown, then?”.

“I don’t know. To double the danger, maybe?”

Sheila passed a paw between her ears. “I was thinking the same thing. That’d be a good way to kill whoever step on the bomb. You step on it, and even if you find a way to disarm it you still have to do it in time before it explodes…”

“Well, ok, but wouldn’t it be more simple…oh, shit”.

Everybody turned his head towards Billy. The porcupine’s face was completely contorted in an astonished expression. He didn’t even beat his eye lips: he was just observing the bomb like it was a monster jumped out of a closet.

“It’s all okay, doc?” Nick asked, even if it was obvious nothing was okay. Bill shook his head and placed the bomb in front of his knees.

“Oh God” he said “oh God. What the fuck…”.

“What’s happening now?” Sheila said, exasperated. Bill shook his head.

“I don’t know” he said. His voice was a whisper. “This doesn’t make sense”.

“Nothing makes sense today. Just tell us what you have found”.

The porcupine turned the bomb towards Nick. “What do you see?” he asked. 

The fox shrugged. "I don't know. Wheels and wires?”.

“Yes, but these wheels shouldn’t be here” he explained. “Someone’s modified the bomb and added these things.”

“Why?”

“How the fuck should I know?! I never seen something like this in for my life!”

Nick raised his eyebrows.

“Aren’t you a technician?” “I’m a technician, not an engineer!

I guess they control the display, but how the fuck…”

“Can you stop it?”

“I…”

“Bill, can you stop it or not?”

The porcupine curved his head towards the other members of the bomb-squad. They looked as astounded as him, if not worse. The mammal sighed, then stood up and stepped away from the bomb.

“I don’t think so. I mean, we can try, but in so little time..."

Nick’s gaze turned over Sheila. The she-wolf was looking at him, her eyes widened and arms crossed over her chest. Her legs were slightly shivering, and she was clearly worried. It was weird, but the fox found her so hot when she was worried. Fucking Oedipus complex.

The fox turned his glare over the bomb. Display said “8:14”. Nick closed his eyes and started to breath softly. He could feel the soft kiss of the wind over his 

_Something. Something’s not right. Everybody’s going to die, and it’ll be all your fault. But something’s not right. What is it?_

“Okay” Sheila said "ok, here’s what we’re going to do…”

“No.”

This time it was Nick’s turn to have everyone’s eyes pointed on him. The fox moved his feet over the wire. He was sweating, and that didn’t make sense because canines can’t sweat.

“Nick,” Jess said, “what the fuck are trying to do?”

He turned his eyes towards her.

“Something stupid.”

The fox took his foot off the wire.

* * *

**English pub, Downtown. Ten minutes later.**

Nick was hungry.

It wasn’t just a slight appetite. It was real hunger. He was eating his bugburger like it was the first of his life, and he didn’t even care if the other customers were looking at him with disgusted expressions or making outraged comments about his bad manners. He needed to eat, and it was the only thing he cared about.

Sheila was looking at him by the other side of the table. There wasn’t anger or disgust in her eyes, just an incredible worried expression and a sparkle of fear.

When Nick noticed it, he raised his eyes from the burger and looked at her. “Everything alright?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Her answer was firm and dry like a kick in the guts. Nick immediately recognized the commanding tone in her voice and stopped eating.

“You’re angry with me again, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer. She just turned her gaze out of the window and crossed her arms. Nick sighed and wrapped the paper around his burger.

“Let’s get out of here.” he said, and then stood up. The fox paid the bill -with Sheila’s money, of course, he didn’t have his wallet-and then walked with her out of the pub. The two mammals strolled on the sidewalk until Nick found a bench next to the park. It was a nice place to talk, so he sat on it and looked at Sheila.

“Can we talk about it?”

“Only if I can cut your balls off after.”

“That’d make sex a little problematic.”

The wolf growled.

“What makes think I still want to have sex with _you_?”.

Nick shook his head and took his burger off the paper. He intended to talk to her and then finish it, but she was already furious and the fox knew that eating it during or after an explanation wasn’t really going to change anything.

“I know what you’re thinking.” he said, devouring the bugburger “And I get it, seriously. I’m not gonna say a little part of me wasn’t scared to screw it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had thought I did it following a sort of suicidal instinct or something like that. I’m sure some psychiatrist would say that’s the most certain possibility, but they’d be wrong.”

Sheila’s eyes darted.

“So, you already knew it was a dummy bomb?”

“It wasn’t exactly a dummy bomb. I’m sure that the only way to disarm it was taking my foot off of the wire. If we had waited for the countdown to reach the zero, we’d be all dead by now.”

“So, you basically saved us?”

Nick didn’t answer. He just smiled and restarted to eat his sandwich. The female wolf sighed, then passed a paw between her ears and sat on the bench next to him.

“Ok, Nick” she said “I’m tired of playing this game. You know something you don’t want to tell me. Do it, or I’ll take you off the fucking case”.

The fox nodded.

“Ok. But I have a condition”.

She turned her head towards her.

“And it would be…?”

Nick finished the burger.

“I’m the only one who works on the case.”

“What? Wilde, this is…”

“Don’t fucking ‘Wilde’ me” Nick roared, turning his head towards her “we screwed in your damn bedroom every weekend for the last few months. Call me Nick, slick, honey, call me _cocksucker_ if you fucking want, but don’t call me ‘Wilde’!”

Sheila’s eyes widened. The wolf wasn’t the kind of girl you intimidated easily, but it was the first time Nick snapped at her like that. The canine had never seen the fox angry before. She immediately decided she didn’t like it.

It took a few moments for Nick to realize what he had just done. Feeling a wave of remorse running towards him, the tod rested his elbows on his knees and put his face into his paws.

“Sorry.” he murmured “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you. I’m not angry at anyone. Just don’t call me Wilde, would you? It reminds me of my father.”

Sheila swallowed. “You never talk about him”.

Nick smirked weakly.

“I tried, once. You said I was being a drama queen.”

The two mammals stayed silent on the bench, their fingers crossed and their backs curved forward. After a moment, Nick sighed and clapped his paws once.

“Well” he murmured, still smiling harshly “let’s start with the head.”

“What?” “You want an explanation, right? I’m trying to explain.”

“Oh. Nice. Go on.”

“Ok. So, whoever this fucker is, he didn’t just choose a random detective to send it to. I think I was his targeted from the start. That’s why I asked you to not put other mammals on this case. I’m the only one he wants.”

“So, I should just put you in the position to play the solitary hero?”

“More or less. The point is, that he already knows everything, since he placed the box in front of my door. He knew I was going to step on the wire and activate the bomb. He probably expected me to find the body first, but he didn’t expect the exhibition of my incredible courage consisting in me fainting on the floor in my home.”

“Ok. Then why the modified tripwire bomb?”.

“That was just another hazard, probably to evaluate my intelligence. He wanted to know if I was clever enough to play his game and win.”

“What if you weren’t?”

Nick shrugged.

“Aside of our painful death, I think that he would just choose another one to play with. Or he would have stopped. Who knows, maybe killing myself wasn’t a bad idea. It could have prevented the death of other innocent people.”

Two seconds of silence, and then Sheila snorted.

“Now, _that_ was your suicidal instinct kicking in.”

Nick laughed a little. The fox stood up and stuffed his paws in his pockets, his gaze pointed over the mammals walking over the sides of the street.

“Look, I know you’re not used to taking orders, but I’m gonna tell you a couple of things I think you should do”.

“Would they help with the case?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m all ears.”

The fox almost thought about making a joke, but it wasn’t the right time to come back to the old habits. He had a work to do.

“I want you to organize a conference on the ZNN. Tell them there’s a serial killer on the street, but don’t say anything about me and the tripwire bomb. Nobody aside from us must know about that. Threaten to fire anyone who talks, scare them to death if you have, but their mouths must be kept shut.”

“Why?”

“Aw, c’mon. A little bit of faith, please. The killer knows me, and perhaps I know him too. I’m sure he already knows I’m still alive, and if he does then I don’t want to give him any more info. I don't want to give info to anyone else.”

“Aw, please, don’t start with this shit again…”

“I’m serious, Sheila. I’m the only one who works on this case, and nobody else".

The wolf shook her head.

  
“Don’t even think about it. I’m not gonna put you alone against this guy. It’s a suicide mission.”

  
“Oh, yeah, right,” Nick said sarcastically “how stupid of me. Let’s make a fucking team to hunt him down, so he can put a bomb in the bureau and kill every mammal he finds in his way, until he decides he’s had enough. Even better, let’s put every detective of the city behind him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to pick us off one by one in a couple of days.”

  
“Why, you think it'll be better if i throw you in this shit alone? 

  
“No. I’m saying that if I work on it alone, I’m the only one who dies. If you give me a partner, or place me in a team, we all die.”

  
Sheila sighed. The female wolf stood up too and placed herself in front of him, trying to appear more intimidating than she already was. It failed, of course, but Nick didn’t say anything to her.

  
“I want to be informed.”

  
“You will be.”

  
“And I want you to be careful. No hero bullshit while you’re on the case. If you start hanging around like a fucking avenger, I’ll take you off the case.”

  
Nick snorted. The fox spread his paw and raised an eyebrow.

  
“I’m sorry. Do I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger?”.

  
“No. You look like an ass. Go home, sleep a couple of hours. You’ll feel better.”

  
Nick shook his head.

  
“No can do. We have to find the girl’s family.”

  
“Let me handle that. We’ll determine her identity and send Jessica to question her parents. When she has the information, I’ll send her to you.”

  
The fox rolled his eyes up.

  
“God, I just explained to you that I want to be the only one involved in this case and you decide to send Jessica?”

  
“Then what the fuck do you want to do?”

  
“For now, nothing. Find the dead chick’s parents and then tell me where they are. I’ll be the one talking to them. Now I’m just gonna go home and take a shower.”

  
Sheila stayed silent for a moment, then nodded and turned her head towards the alley where they had found the bomb. A group of cops was still hanging around the place, searching for other bombs, even if Nick had told them they weren’t going to find anything, and cussing the smell of dead cheetah. The female wolf looked at Nick.

  
“You know what is gonna happen next, right?”

  
He turned towards her. There was an interrogative look in his eyes.

  
“I mean,” She explained, crossing her arms, “you know what the next step is? Do you have a plan, or you’re just trying to gain a little time before you buy a ticket for the first airplane to Mexico?”

  
The tod observed her for almost a minute, the confused gaze on his muzzle turning even more confuse. Then he actually realized what she really meant, and couldn’t help but starting to laugh.

  
“Oh, jeez,” he said, between a chuckle and the other “that sounds like something I would do, doesn’t it?”

  
Sheila’s mouth remained close. Nick took a breath and sighed. It wasn’t a sad sigh, or an angry sigh. It was more a tired sigh, a resigned one, the kind of sigh tired people do when they are facing something they are too tired to face. One that says they don’t even care anymore.

  
“Well,” he muttered, “they say honesty is the most important thing in a relationship.”

  
The fox turned his back on her and started to walk along the path, his head hung over the asphalt and the trench coat pushed to the left by the wind.

  
“You better go back the Bureau, Sheila. Storm’s coming.”

  
Then he turned on a side street and got out of her sight.

  
Sheila didn’t understand. Perplexed, the wolf turned her head right behind her and pointed her gaze to the morning sun. Up there, so far away but at the same time so near, just after the line of the horizon, a bunch of dark clouds had just made their appearance.

* * *

  
“Home sweet home.”

  
Nick opened the main door of the building and went in. The place was already empty: the cops had probably finished with it last night, and didn’t want to waste more time in a disgusting hole like that.

  
The truth was that Nick wanted to even less than them. The killer sent the cheetah’s head right to his door, and that meant he knew where the fox lived. Nick’s intentions were to get his money, clothes, the gun he was hiding under his mattress and then get out of that fucking place before it exploded under his feet. He wasn’t going to go back to Sheila’s house since he didn’t want to get her involved even more than she already was, but that was okay. He had lived on the street for more than twenty years. If there was someone who knew all the safe places in Zootopia, it was Nick.

  
The fox started to walk towards his apartment’s door.

  
Then stopped.

  
For the second time in the same day, the feeling something was not right kicked in. He looked around the place, trying to find anything in particular that was subconsciously sending signs of danger to his brain.

  
“What the hell…”

  
“You know, it’s so funny to look at you” Judy teased. Nick cussed and turned his gaze to her.

  
“Carrots, do me a damn favor and fuck off. I haven’t got time for your bullshit right now.”

  
“Oh, I know. That’s why it’s so funny to look at you. You really think you can stop this killer, but you can’t even see what’s wrong with this place. It should be so obvious, even for you.”

  
“Really? If it is so obvious, why don’t you fucking tell me?”

  
She laughed.

  
“Aw, c’mon. That wouldn’t be very fun.”

  
“Then fucking stop messing with my head.”

  
Judy sighed, but didn’t say anything. Nick turned his head towards the wall and placed a paw over the marble. He was panicking. His head was turning like a top and his heart was racing in his chest. He knew something wasn’t right, he knew that it was so obvious even a child could see it, but his brain hurt so much and stopped him from focusing long enough to get it. The fingers of his right paw pressed between his ears and the fox closed his eyes.

  
“There’s nothing out in the street,” he said, “the roads are clean and so are the rooves. No suspect cars or vans. It means that there’s something wrong here, where I am”.

  
“Oh, Gawd, Sir Sherlock” Judy said, putting a paw on her lips and faking an astonished expression over her face, “I could never have deduced it. Who taught you how to investigate?”

  
“Shut the fuck up.” he growled, “Just shut the fuck up”.

  
The fox turned to the stairs.

  
“There’s nothing here. No object, no mammal. It means the problem is something who’s not here…”

  
The fox’s eyes widened.

  
“Oh god, finally!” Judy said, rolling her eyes up. “He got it.”

  
Mrs. Springlewood wasn’t in the corridor.

  
Every time Nick screwed something up or came home late, the damn lynx was there to remind him how much he sucked or what a shame it was for her to have one of his kind in the building. She had repeated that scene so many times that it had become routine for him. This time the fox had actually caused a raid from the ZPD in his apartment, and the fact she wasn’t already yelling at him or telling him to get his ass off of her propriety didn’t make sense.

  
Nick ran towards her apartment and found the door already open. The fox widened it with a shove, and then stepped inside.

  
Mrs. Springlewood’s body was hanging from the ceiling, the noose around her neck so tight he could see her broken windpipe through her fur.

The other side of the rope was tied around the chandelier, and it was funny because the old bitch was so proud of that antique when she was alive. There was a puddle of shit and piss under her and it was still spreading all over the Persian carpet.

  
Nick slowly walked towards the body and looked at her belly. There was a note nailed to her abdomen. The fox ripped it from her and started to read, his paw trembling.

  
**Hey, Buddy!**

**Sorry, I shouldn’t have wrote this note. I know that you’re tired as fuck and you probably just want to sleep right now, but I couldn’t help it. I saw you at work today, and it was really great! I knew you would solve my little puzzle! I almost feel ashamed I tested you like this, but you know how these things go. I had to verify I wasn’t just overestimating you.**

**Now, you’re probably wondering, why’s your landlady’s hanging from her fucking chandelier? Well, I already knew you weren’t going to forgive me for doubting your cleverness with just my words (I wouldn’t do it, either) so I decided to sneak into your condominium and kill her. Man, she deserved it. She always treated you like shit, for God’s sake. Therefore, I broke her neck and pulled her off of your fucking balls. It was just to demonstrate to you how much I admire you. I hope you’re not angry anymore and that we’re square now.**

**But even if you are, don’t worry! Can you turn on the TV, please?**

  
Nick took the remote control from the table and turned the TV. On the screen appeared a special of the ZNN channel. The sound was too low to get what the journalist was saying, but Nick didn’t need it to understand what was happening. Behind the panther’s shoulder there was a video of an apartment in Sahara Square burning like a candle, and in the right corner of the screen there was the photo of two cheetahs.

  
The fox clenched his teeth and started to read again.

  
**Ta-daaa! Surprise!**  
**I knew you were going to question the girl’s parents about their daughter (I’m talking about the dead one in the alley, of course, not the old bitch in the room with you) so I killed them too! See? I’m not as silly as you thought! Now, it will be hard to find out more about her! Isn’t it cool?!**

**God, I’m taking forever to write this message. Sorry, I’m just sooo excited for this game! But I get you’re tired, I’m tired too, after all. I think I’ll give you twenty four hours (fuck it, maybe even forty-eight) to plan your next move. And maybe even have a little fun with your cute sexy wolf. God I’m so jealous of you! But don’t worry, I won’t try anything with her. It’s like in a gang: my friends’ girls are sacred!**

**I won’t give you any help, because I honestly don’t think you need it. But I can give you a hint: next time you go out late at night to some place with a lot of windows, well…look out for the windows!**

  
**Your dear friend,**  
**Death.**

  
Nick let the paper go and it started to float to the floor, finally stopping when it fell in the puddle of shit and piss. The fox walked towards the house phone and composed a number.

Driiin. Driiin. Driii-clack!

_"H-hello_?" Said a female voice, _"Who is it_?".

"Hey, mom. Nick's here".

The voice squeaked.

" _Oh my God, Nicky! Have you seen the news? They said there's a guy who's targeting the city! The journalist said you're involved, too! Just what the heck is happening here?!"._

Nick lowered his head and placed a paw over his eyes.

"It's okay, mom. Nothing to worry about. You know how journalists are. Look, just to know, your still have that cottage in campaign?".

" _Uh...Y-yes,  I still have it. W-why?_ ".

"Oh, nothing. I just think it's better if you just...go to live there for a bit. Not much, just until the dust settles".

There was a moment of silence. Then a sob from the phone made Nick tremble like a scared child.

_"Oh Jesus_ " the female said, her voice shaked by the sobs " _Oh god, Nick, they're right then! There's really a terrorist out there!"_.

"Mom, please...".

" _No"_ she cried " _don't even think about it! Don't tell me that everything is okay, because I know it isn't! Just what's happening now? What have you done, Nicholas!?"._

 

Nick squeezed the phone tighter. God, how pathetic he was. He was going to cry and didn't even know why.

"I didn't do anything, mom. I just have some problems at work. Go to the cottage".

" _I'm not going anywhere without you!"._

_"_ Yes, you are. You have to stay away from me, mom. The safest place where to be now is away from me. I'll send Finnick to pick you up at your apartment".

" _NICK, DON'T YOU DARE-"._

Clack. 

Nick opened the paw and the phone slipped out of his finger, crushing against the pavement and exploding in a thousand of little fragments. He got out of the room and entered in his apartment.

The gun under his mattress was vanished, and so were the money. The fox walked towards the fridge. Lucky for him, there was a last bottle of beer in the bottom shelf.

He took it, then lay down on his couch and started to drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter edited by SaberGatomon.


End file.
